Scriptiegegevens

It has been argued that the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property rights (TRIPS) has disproportionally burdened developing countries, benefiting developed ones. This paper looks into the question of why developing states nevertheless accepted the final draft of the TRIPS. A neo-Gramscian approach as advo-cated by, among others, Robert Cox, Andreas Bieler and William Robinson, is used. The conclusion that is reached is that the influences of a transnational capitalist class (TCC) on developing state agents led to this ac-ceptance. This TCC used its transnational influence network, consisting of a broad variety of agents, to advocate its ideas, compromising with the developing state agents to build consent among them, as well as using coercive methods to pressure them into agreeing.